JEDDAH, 18 March — Interior Minister Prince Naif has denied that members of the Commission for Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice prevented parents and other men from trying to rescue girls from the school in Makkah where 15 young students died in a stampede while trying to escape from a fire.

Speaking in Makkah after attending a career day function organized by Umm Al-Qura University, Prince Naïf said that reports about how the commission members prevented members of the Civil Defense and others from taking part in the rescue operation were not true. He blamed the media for making mistakes by publishing untrue accounts of the tragedy.

On the first day of the incident, 14 girls were killed and over 50 injured when a fire broke out in the school and the 800 students started running down the only staircase. The 15th victim died Saturday of injuries sustained in the stampede. Fifteen-year-old Asma Al-Amri had been in a coma since she was admitted to hospital.

The problem was compounded by the lack of safety precautions, amid widespread repots that the girls were unable to escape because they found the main gate locked and the guard who took care of the keys absent.

But Humaid Al-Hadly, the guard of the fire-ravaged school, refuted allegations that he had left the school premises after locking its gate, thus hampering rescue operations. “This is totally false. I had kept the gate open as per the instructions of the school director,” he had told Arab News.

Hadly, who is over 60, said Muneera Fadl ur-Rahman, the school director, informed him that a fire that had broken on the top floor of the building.

“She told me to open all the gates of the school to help the girls and teachers get out as quickly as possible. I responded by unlocking them all. I also turned off the electricity supply,” he said.

Hadly said he took part in the rescue operation, along with Civil Defense officers. He said more than 250 students had got out of the building before Civil Defense team arrived at the scene.

Refuting the allegations against the commission members, Prince Naif said: “What has been said about men of the commission” — preventing the parents and other men from trying to rescue the girls — “was totally baseless. There were two men from the commission who came with other people at the scene to ensure that the girls were not subjected to any kind of mistreatment outside the building. They did not interfere in any other matter. When they arrived there was not a single girl, teacher or helper inside the building. This is one of the negative things about the press: it hastily rushes to report news which turns out to be untrue.”

Prince Naif said a competent and qualified team led by Makkah Governor Prince Abdul Majeed is leading the investigation into the tragedy and that people would be held to account.

The prince said that he was not defending any particular government department, but rather was only seeking to clarify certain points. “We all belong to the same country, whether we work in the government or the private sector — and that goes for males and females,” he commented.

He added the deaths did not occur because of the fire, which was put out by the Civil Defense within three minutes, but as a result of the panic that followed. The building, which was housing 800 students at the time, had only one staircase exit.